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Companies devise a way to beat old age

Aubrey De Grey should be careful not to wander too close to any FTSE 100 board meetings in the near future. There is a risk the Cambridge academic, who has predicted that humans will soon have a life expectancy of 1,000 years, could be set upon.

De Grey’s forecasts are the most depressing news possible for companies with defined-benefit pension schemes — those that make regular, agreed payments, often expressed as a percentage of final salary, on retirement.

Directors and pension trustees have already been cruelly mauled by the British population’s habit of living longer than expected, drawing extra pension payments in the process. In the past 12 months UK longevity forecasts have risen by a year, sufficient to increase the combined FTSE 100 pension deficit by £1m an hour, according to Hewitt Associates, a firm of actuaries.

If De Grey is right, defined-benefit schemes, and many of the companies that